


Sounds of Noctis

by WahlBuilder



Category: The Technomancer (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-22 12:37:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22416304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: Dandolo can't sleep. He listens to the city.
Kudos: 2
Collections: Hello Earth? This Is Mars...





	Sounds of Noctis

It is a very late, cold hour, the kind of hour when a caravan out in the plains would be asleep: dark and quiet and salted by stars and brushed by wind. But Dandolo can’t sleep.

He stretches a leg on the rail, his back against a column. He is perched high, on the upper gallery—but not high enough. Still, he can’t go climbing, so he makes do.

He closes his eyes, wraps a blanket-scarf tighter around his shoulders, and listens to the Palace.

Wind chimes tinkle down in the guest hall. A murmur flows up the walls: he knows it’s the guards, though he cannot discern words. There will be a watch change soon. Steps on the west side: not muffled by carpets, meaning that someone is walking in the hallway. Rather loud steps, boots with a prominent heel. One of the Technomancers, then. Who would be awake at this hour, who would still be wearing Technomantic boots, whose steps would be so sure? Zachariah. Should visit him in the morning, ask whether he needs anything. It might be just a general worry about his people. The responsibility for the whole Order is upon his shoulders now, whether or not he decides to become the Great Master. They are his people, and he belongs to them. Dandolo understands.

The steps cease—then move sideways and disappear. On a rug, most likely. He’s gone to one of the rooms of his kindred. Perhaps for advice. Who else doesn’t sleep at this hour? Sam. Half of the Technomancers.

Melvin.

Another set of steps, slower, soft but with the creaking of sand underneath: a guard walking the third gallery. It is the most dangerous hour, the one when it’s so easy to allow yourself drop your vigilance. Dandolo isn’t easily injured or killed, and an assassination attempt is unlikely, though not entirely impossible. But Frances would grill a guard who’s lost focus.

A soft low note, as though someone clearing a flute with a blow of air—the wind in the Singing Walk. A hum followed by a slight, barely perceptible vibration of the rails under Dandolo: the pump generators of the Upper Gardens have kicked in.

Restless, he jumps onto the floor and leaves the gallery through a side door.

He walks the dark corridors, not needing the light, then leaves the Palace via a small side ladder. He stops on a platform (third level, the Swan side) to breathe in. The air carries scents of warmed rock and sand, metal and spices—earthy, calling to the nomad in him: it is both the scent of the city and the scent of the plains. There is not much difference.

The city is quiet and cooling in the night, and he shivers, but removes the scarf from his shoulders and ties it around his hips. The cold, he hopes, will help him clear his head.

He goes down to the ground level. The Palatial lamps, filled with jelly gas, shine cold blue light. Down in the Grand Market, so quiet in contrast to the lively din of the day, stalls and shops are covered with carpets.

He throws his head back, looking up, up. The walls of the canyon run high into the sky, framing the trail of salt-stars. On the upper levels, lights are scattered like constellations closer than those in the sky trail.

Blades of a wind generator fan are creaking lazily on the edge of his hearing. Near the Palace to his left, the wind plays with the ‘wind horses’.

He walks further, sand whispering under his sandals. Noctis is dream-like in the night, with most lights on the lower levels turned off. He stops by a small eatery. He knows the owners: Hanaru and her wife Elva and Hanaru’s brother Yuu. They make fried noodles with candied brown lichen, and their sauce is known among those in Noctis who like exquisite meals. Tomorrow, they will open their place again and exchange jokes with people coming to them.

Noctians are nomads at the heart, true—but it doesn’t mean they don’t want what everyone else wants: to have a shelter (even if it’s a shelter of a moving sandsail or a tent, or a room in which the canyon wind is a frequent guest), to have sustenance (even if it’s dried molemeat), to be safe. To speak their languages. To have an opportunity to express themselves. To celebrate life and to honour death their own way. To have stability—even if it means the stability of the storm season coming each year, and caravans leaving the city roughly at the same time in winter and summer.

A manta flies above, invisible, but the flap of its wings powerful and unmistakable, and a wind chime tinkles when the manta disturbs the air around it. A voice rushes out and is cut off when someone opens window shutters and closes them again. A generator on the gantry above changes its hum. Sand whispers, sliding down a walkway. An ostrich trills softly somewhere to the left of Dandolo, in the darkness, crossing the sands in its sleep.

Noctis is alive with its own music, and Dandolo is a part of it.


End file.
